Historic advances in computer technology have made it economical for individual users to have their own computing system which has caused the proliferation of the Personal Computer (PC). Continued advances of this computer technology have made these personal computers very powerful but also complex and difficult to manage. It is therefore desirable to separate the user interface devices, including the display, keyboard, mouse, audio and other peripheral devices from the application processing parts of the computing system. In this configuration, the user interface devices are physically located at the desktop, while the processing and storage components of the computer are placed in a central location. The user interface devices are then connected to the processor and storage components with some method of communication.
An additional trend common to the enterprise environment is the emerging availability of powerful desktop appliances such as IP phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal media players, multi-function mobile phones and other interactive computing appliances that require user input and display functions. Such appliances often have small displays and awkward user interfaces. Moreover, these appliances are not integrated for high productivity in a workplace setting where the user's attention is primarily focused on the computer monitor, keyboard and mouse.
Some user interface integration methods are known to the art. As one example, IP phones may be accompanied by application software such as “Customer Interaction Center®” from Interactive Intelligence that pops up an interactive phone-related display window when the phone rings. These products may also include features such as “click-to-dial” which allow users to interact with telephony applications using a desktop mouse. This class of product is typically supported by sophisticated back office equipment including specialized enterprise server platforms and IP telephony equipment. Even in the case of a simple single user IP phone such as a USB phone or “soft phone”, dedicated software is required on the PC to support the application, increasing PC maintenance requirements and introducing processing overheads.
User interface integration may also be found in some video-conferencing systems that share a desktop display between a user's computer and conferencing system. For example, Sony's PSC-TL50 Video Communication system provides a desktop monitor with integrated camera and control panel that supports switching of the system between a video conferencing mode and multitasking mode in which the display flips to supporting a locally connected computer. These systems share display resources by physically switching between different applications running on the PC.
User interface integration may also be found in some thin client systems, such as the Sun Ray product from Sun Microsystems or Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) from Microsoft. Sun Ray is a frame buffer multiplexer that allow several servers to simultaneously provide display information to a single remote desktop. RDP enables a graphical user interface to be shared between applications operating on a local computer and other applications operating on a remote computer connected by RDP. These products do not integrate directly with desktop appliances.
In summary, existing graphical user interface integration methods do not extend beyond switching between different standard computing applications operating on different computers.